Considering it was around 2 weeks ago you probably remember where you when you heard that Zenimax was making a Elder Scrolls MMORPG. You probably also remember that when you heard that Bethesda had made a new studio, Zenimax Online Studio that was going to make it. You probably remember that your heart sank a little. Why might this be? Well, Todd Howard works over at Bethesda and he has been instrumental in making Fallout 3 and both of the modern Elder Scrolls titles(Oblivion and Skyrim). He has a certain reputation for making quality products that might be a little broken at launch but that we love anyway. Yes, he and his team who have been together for more than 10 years in all most completely intact form are the reason why Elder Scrolls has become the mainstream monster that it has. There is no doubt that when people think of Elder Scrolls; they think of Todd Howard.
That might soon change; when next year(probably); the Elder Scrolls are going to venture into the MMORPG arena. A place that really has been ripe for a world so rich and wonderful as those that have been presented to us over the past all most eight years in the modern Elder Scrolls titles. Many people have hoped and prayed that Bethesda would see their way clear to make such a game. Well, back in 2007 they heard your cry and have been working on this MMORPG ever since. And wow, does it look like a product made in 2007. The upper screen is a confirmed screenshot from Gameinformer’s recent story on Elder Scrolls Online the bottom screen is one from Elder Scrolls Skyrim. Do they even look like they were made in the same generation? I’m not even sure that the top screen is even pushing DirectX 9c, let alone Skyrim’s maxed out version of DirectX 11. Now I certainly understand that some compromises must be made to have an RPG become an MMORPG. But I think Aion, Guild Wars 2, and Tera prove that you can make a MMORPG that looks pretty.
But the problems don’t stop there. You see this MMORPG takes place 1000 years before Skyrim. So it takes place at around the time of the end of Oblivion’s last expansion pack or perhaps a bit after that. I think that probably would have been around 2008 or 2009. I guess, they really were looking at current material and working from it. The player has a class. Not like in Skyrim where you just pick skills and go. Well, this was probably for armor sets, weapons, etc… Right? Probably… But to not work from a construct that has impacted the most players and certainly had the best effect seems half hearted. In the Gameinformer article they are all ready talking about features not being ready for launch and being shut away in expansions. Really? You have been working on this game for supposedly 5+ years and your telling me that there are things your saving for expansions? Why? Just take longer making the stupid game. It’s not like anyone would have been the wiser had you not announced the game and it came out in 2015. Perhaps updating the graphics and textures would have been a good idea as well.
From the sound of it the game is going to feature big battle PVP. This is awfully exciting except that every game that has tried to do this: Aion, Warhammer, World of Warcraft, currently Guild Wars 2(still in beta) has been having trouble keeping people from getting caught in lag wells. Or worse, just not knowing what the heck is going on from moment to moment because there are so many skill effects popping off. I remember playing a healer in Warhammer Online and just sitting in back row in World Battles just clicking on squares and pushing heal. Because I could see or didn’t know what the heck was going on the actual battlefield. This game looks about as low resolution as a modern game can; so I guess lag won’t be an issue and we can probably run it on our laptops so if you have a descent PC it’s probably not going to cause too many problems. Except those skill effects are probably still going to be an issue. I think developers need to give up the whole MASSIVE BATTLE thing until we all have Gigabit Ethernet and we all have PCs capable of running their games at MAX settings without any slowdown. For most games I would say this would take five years. But considering how terrible the graphics look in this game maybe, 2014 or so is about right. At least outside of the US; currently the US government is happy with their, “who cares about infrastructure.” attitude, after all it wouldn’t create jobs or anything. Let’s just leave all that to ATT and Comcast, they have done SUCH a good job so far.
What’s also a feature in that game is that one player can actually become the new Emperor! Really? Didn’t some Free To Play do this a couple years back and fail miserably. No one wants to have a player be Emperor… What possible advantage would anyone get from this. Your faction gets more stuff? Well that’s exciting… How about I send them a copy of Fable 3 and they can let me know how exciting it is to be a ruler in an RPG. These ideas are all old… Warhammer tried most them and none of them worked out. I often wonder if these developers don’t get ideas and while trying to implement them; don’t play or pay attention to any other game until their game launches. Because this isn’t the first example of a situation where it seems like it.
At this point, unless things drastically change; I don’t think I’ll be too interested in picking up Elder Scrolls Online. By then, Guild Wars 2 will have been out about a year and I’ll be fully into that or I might go back to playing Star Wars the Old Republic. You know, modern MMORPGs that have the sense to ACTUALLY change the way MMORPGs are played and not going back to 2007. And just a side note, I DO realize that it takes a VERY LONG TIME to make an MMORPG. After all, according to ArenaNet they have been working on Guild Wars 2 since 2005 and they still aren’t finished. But then, the game looks amazing and has some incredible new features that have never appeared in an MMORPG before. They just didn’t remake Dungeons and Dragons Online and slap the Elder Scrolls logo on it. Which sounds like that might have been better. Because at least then, they would have had dragons in the game.(Oh there aren’t any of those in there either. No playable werewolves, vampires….) But there would definitely be a way that I would get excited about Elder Scrolls Online. If they announced it was launching Free to Play. Because that looks like about what the game is worth and heck for free I’ll try just about anything…. Well, maybe I still wouldn’t, some of those games can be really large downloads… I do have my data cap to think about…. I’ll get back to you in 2013 about the whole Elder Scrolls Online thing, after all, things might be better by then…
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